Stalin Movie

When producer Mark Carliner gazed from his Moscow hotel room two weeks ago and saw tank units controlled by the Soviet coup leaders streaming into the city, it seemed his dreams were crumbling. For two years Carliner had been trying to get the green light for a three-hour miniseries based on the life of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

In 1930, German journalist Paul Scheffer observed about being in the presence of Joseph Stalin: "You feel at once that he is dangerous." So, too, do you instantly feel that the epic 20th-Century despot ably depicted by Robert Duvall in HBO's "Stalin" is someone to fear deeply. It lasts from the moment you meet him being rejected for World War I service in the czar's crumbling army until his death in 1953, surrounded by toadies at his dacha at Kuntsevo.

In 1930, German journalist Paul Scheffer observed about being in the presence of Joseph Stalin: "You feel at once that he is dangerous." So, too, do you instantly feel that the epic 20th-Century despot ably depicted by Robert Duvall in HBO's "Stalin" is someone to fear deeply. It lasts from the moment you meet him being rejected for World War I service in the czar's crumbling army until his death in 1953, surrounded by toadies at his dacha at Kuntsevo.

As she marched toward Red Square on Saturday morning with 20,000 pro-communist demonstrators, Kira Korniyenkova cherished her vision of Josef Stalin: a courageous, iron-willed leader who transformed his backward nation into a superpower. Saturday evening, as she sat in a packed movie theater watching the Russian premiere of the film "Stalin," Korniyenkova absorbed quite a different view of the Soviet leader: a cruel, power-hungry monster who destroyed his family, his friends and his people.

As she marched toward Red Square on Saturday morning with 20,000 pro-communist demonstrators, Kira Korniyenkova cherished her vision of Josef Stalin: a courageous, iron-willed leader who transformed his backward nation into a superpower. Saturday evening, as she sat in a packed movie theater watching the Russian premiere of the film "Stalin," Korniyenkova absorbed quite a different view of the Soviet leader: a cruel, power-hungry monster who destroyed his family, his friends and his people.

Five years ago, "Stalin's Funeral" would have been a sensation. Written and directed by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the Soviet Union's best-known modern-day poet, the new film depicts life under Josef V. Stalin as a nightmare, which culminated in hundreds of deaths in the frenzied crowd outside the Moscow hall where the dictator's body lay in state in March, 1953.

Josef Stalin died 38 years ago, but his shadow lingers over the people he forced into submission for 31 years. Establishing a link between Stalin, the history of oppression in the former Soviet Union and the problems the people there face as they stumble toward freedom is the focus of "The Inner Circle," a new film by Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky. Based on an idea that came to Konchalovsky more than 20 years ago when he met a film projectionist who had worked for Stalin, the film is a loosely fictionalized version of the life of Alexander Ganshin, a simple working-class man, played in the film by Tom Hulce, who screened movies for Stalin from 1935 until his death in 1953 and thus became a member of Stalin's envied and feared inner circle.

Tragedy always seems to stalk the followers of charismatic, paranoid dictators. The 1991 film "The Inner Circle," directed by Ivan Konchalovsky, takes us inside the former Soviet Union during the last years of Stalin. While millions are imprisoned or killed, Sanshin, played by Tom Hulce, becomes Stalin's personal movie projectionist and is blindly devoted to the tyrant. Based on a true story, the movie was the first major Hollywood production filmed inside the Kremlin.

ANYONE who's seen Warren Beatty's 1981 film "Reds," which dramatized the birth pangs of the Russian Revolution, may be equally moved by "Red Mutiny," Neal Bascomb's elegiac and emotionally involving story of that revolution's dress rehearsal. It happened on a muggy June day in 1905, when 700 Russian sailors aboard the battleship Potemkin mutinied, throwing some of their officers into the Black Sea, and set up a free-speech soviet (council) to run the ship under the red flag of revolution.

Josef Stalin died 38 years ago, but his shadow lingers over the people he forced into submission for 31 years. Establishing a link between Stalin, the history of oppression in the former Soviet Union and the problems the people there face as they stumble toward freedom is the focus of "The Inner Circle," a new film by Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky. Based on an idea that came to Konchalovsky more than 20 years ago when he met a film projectionist who had worked for Stalin, the film is a loosely fictionalized version of the life of Alexander Ganshin, a simple working-class man, played in the film by Tom Hulce, who screened movies for Stalin from 1935 until his death in 1953 and thus became a member of Stalin's envied and feared inner circle.

When producer Mark Carliner gazed from his Moscow hotel room two weeks ago and saw tank units controlled by the Soviet coup leaders streaming into the city, it seemed his dreams were crumbling. For two years Carliner had been trying to get the green light for a three-hour miniseries based on the life of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

Five years ago, "Stalin's Funeral" would have been a sensation. Written and directed by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the Soviet Union's best-known modern-day poet, the new film depicts life under Josef V. Stalin as a nightmare, which culminated in hundreds of deaths in the frenzied crowd outside the Moscow hall where the dictator's body lay in state in March, 1953.